Those InBetween Places
by Wickedgal08
Summary: For LostInLost18's Lost Ficcing Challenge 2011. Ana has the late night shift and ends up conversing with a drunkard locked away for the night, whose own revelations end up impacting Ana in a terrifying way. One-shot.


Those In-Between Places

Summary: For LostInLost18's Lost Ficcing Challenge 2011. Set in the sideways world, and Ana is on the last shift of the evening when she's called down to the cell to try to reason with a drunk Richard Alpert, who babbles on about an island. But the more she talks with him, the more memories start to surface. Could it be this man makes more sense than she could ever have guessed?

….

Ten p.m. The loneliest hour of the night.

Swivelling in her chair, Ana chewed the end of a deteriorating pencil as she stared at the clock, willing the next two hours to speed up. The precinct was near enough deserted, with the remaining officers either catching up on paperwork (easily the most detestable part of the job), or checking up on the prisoners they had incarcerated in the cells below.

She flicked through one of the files absent-mindedly, unable to process anything due to the fact she'd had little sleep last night. The recurring nightmare - the one she'd had ever since she'd got off that plane, funnily enough - she'd had was keeping her from getting any sleep. It wasn't a particularly scary nightmare, but the ending always seemed to cause her body to jolt awake. Sometimes she was in the jungle, and other times she was in a dark room, a gun playing between her hands. At some point, the gun left her hands and then ended up being pointed at her, the sound it made going off startling her more than the impact of the bullet going through her chest.

Since then, Ana hadn't found it particularly easy handling guns. Every criminal caught she double checked for weapons, terrified not so much of dying but of being caught off guard. Some of her colleagues teased her, suggesting her holiday in Sydney had made her gone soft, made her tough façade retreat into the shadows.

"Officer Cortez?" a voice broke into her thoughts. "You still awake?"

She whirled around, staring into the face of one of her colleagues.

"Not really," she grumbled. "Why are you still here, Lambert? Can't imagine your missus is pleased with the number of night shifts you've acquired since the Hoffman incident."

"Nah." Lambert shook his head, grinning. "She hates it. But we get by. Listen, you don't want to do me a massive favour do you?"

"Nope," she cut across, allowing a brief smirk to cross her face as he rolled his eyes. "Nah, shoot. I'm just bored and looking for a victim to screw over."

"Yeah, like that isn't normal procedure for you," Lambert teased. "Anyway, you mind taking over cell duty? Amber's just called me. She's at a house party and wants me to come pick her up. Doesn't want her mother to know she snuck out to the party she was strictly forbidden to go to." He gave a soft laugh. "Why she thinks I'll be less strict with her, I have no idea…"

Ana whistled under her breath, looking faintly impressed.

"She's at house parties already? She was like, eight, last I saw of her. I'm not going to have to arrest her in the near future am I?"

Lambert laughed. "Nah. If anyone's gonna do the arresting where my daughter's concerned, it'll be me. And I'll enjoy doing it."

Ana gave a low chuckle, enjoying the brief banter between her and Lambert (whose first name nobody really knew). It gave her otherwise dull night a few moments of distraction.

"Who's down there?" she asked, motioning towards the door that led to the cells. "Anybody interesting, or just the usual clowns?"

"Mostly drunks," Lambert admitted. "Only one really seems to be talking, although I can't make heads or tails of it. Something about an island or whatever."

Ana sighed as she pushed herself out of the chair.

"Fine," she agreed, her tone dripping with reluctance. "But you owe me."

"Thanks, Ana," Lambert replied gratefully. "I would ask someone else but…"

They both looked at the only other office in the room, who currently was alternating between picking his nose and flicking through a poorly hidden Hustler magazine. Ana chuckled and lightly hit Lambert's arm.

"Get outta here, 'fore I change my mind," she commanded.

He gave her a mock salute and ducked out, leaving Ana to slowly make her way over to where the cells were. All the cells were occupied but, like Lambert had said, they seemed to consist of men who were completely wasted. There was a distinct smell of urine which had Ana cringing away. No wonder nobody liked taking this shift. Why did anyone let themselves get to this point? She liked the odd drinking session as much as anybody else but she knew her limits.

The end cell at first looked as though nobody was occupying it. But that was because she didn't account for the figure sprawled across the floor, his eyes wide open, his jaw slightly slack.

She tapped the bars impatiently.

"Yo, you alive in there?" she demanded.

There was a long pause.

"In a manner of speaking," the figure spoke.

Ana pulled up the chair in the corner and sat by the cell, her eyes perusing the room with disinterest. Her eyes constantly strayed to the cell beside her, the figure looking just as disinterested in his surroundings as her. From what she could gather, he had dark hair, with dark eyebrows to match, which didn't exactly set him apart from the others. What did interest her - slightly - was the fact she'd detected a hint of Spanish in his voice.

"What's your name?" she asked, idly striking up conversation seeing how he was the only conscious individual in the room.

"Richard. Richard Alpert," the man responded, his voice flat and lifeless.

"I've heard of you," Ana said, leaning forward. "I was reading your file before I came in. Up until three days ago, you had a perfect record, and within the space of three days managed to get a number of criminal charges." She tried to recall what they were. "Harassment, drunken public disorder, a couple of DUIs…" She leaned forward. "What do you do? What's your job?"

"I'm head of Human Resources for a company in Portland," Richard muttered, pushing himself up.

"And how come you ended up in L.A.?"

"Recruitment purposes. Our company is losing people to a rival business and my boss sent me to give a presentation to a small business venue here in L.A. Try and round some people up."

"So, how does a guy go from having a good job, no criminal record, good prospects, to this?" She gestured aimlessly around. "I mean, I see all sorts in here. Most come from backgrounds you only hear about in the news. You wouldn't believe some of the horror stories… But you - Well, you confuse me. Enlighten me on how a guy who has everything going for him winds up in a prison cell after a three day crime spree."

Richard shuffled forwards, his fingers clasping the bars, his face pressed against the bars as he scrutinised her carefully.

"Nobody believes me," he hiccupped, his body swaying clearly indicating he was intoxicated. "I didn't believe myself until I saw _h-her."_

"Her?" Ana frowned. "You ruined your life for a woman?"

Richard shook his head.

"She had dark hair. Beautiful eyes…. A body to kill for," he recounted, his hiccups interrupting every third word of his sentence. "A-And the thing was….I knew her. I'd met her before. I'd loved her. I'd _lost _her." He smiled in the darkness, his dark eyes filling with tears. "She was my Isabella."

Ana listened, her dark eyes wandering past the cell, past the precinct, to a completely different world. She allowed herself to just forget for one moment, allow herself to drown in the nightmare, blurred faces appearing beyond the veil before disappearing again.

And, just like that, she snapped out of it, something inside her warning her against tapping into something she couldn't (and wouldn't) understand.

"How could you have known her already?" she asked, her voice harsh to make up for her moment of weakness. "That's the liquor talking."

"No…" Richard smiled. "In my whole life, I've never felt for one moment how I felt in the seconds I met her. It was…incredible. And moments after that, I remembered everything else." His tone darkened. "I remembered that… _hell_, that goddamn island, and how everything after Isabella just seemed so meaningless."

"Love makes idiots out of us all," Ana noted, assuming everything she was hearing was merely the gibberish of a lovesick fool. "Believe me, all women are bitches and all men are heartbreakers. That's the way of the world."

Richard's eyes rolled on to hers, and he finally seemed to see her. She gave him a hard look, sighing as she retrieved a bottle of water from beside her and passed it to him.

"For the hangover," she replied, at his confused look. "It's gonna hurt like a bitch in the morning."

"You seem familiar," he mused. "Have we ever met?"

"Doubtful." Ana leaned back on her chair. "I make a point of avoiding familiarity with men. Saves time and effort."

"I take it you've never been in love then," Richard stated, starting to sober up as he practically inhaled the water she'd given him.

"I was. Once." Ana's eyes darkened at the memory. "Taught me love's just a waste of time." She gave a dark laugh. "And I'm sharing this with you because….?"

"Because you're lost," Richard whispered, staggering to his feet.

"Excuse me?" Ana snapped.

"You're lost," he repeated. "But you'll find your way again." He hiccupped loudly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "People like us always do."

"This island…" Ana suddenly ventured, sounding so uncertain. "You mentioned it earlier… What was it like?"

"At first glance, an ordinary island." Richard stared at her as he spoke, bitterness laced in between words. "But if ever there's a hell on earth, I'd wager whatever bit of self-respect I have left that that's where it is." He laughed wildly. "Some of the things I remember…. They don't even make sense, and _I _saw them with my own eyes."

"A monster…" Ana suddenly whispered, closing her eyes, the silence in her own head shattered by the sound of a loud roar.

Her eyes snapped open, her expression of fear replaced by disgust. How was she letting a common drunk get the best of her like this? He obviously had some other motive up his sleeve.

"Get some shut-eye, Mr Alpert," she said coldly, kicking back her chair. "It's gonna be a hell of a night."

She heard him scuttling around a lot, his breathing sounding unnaturally raspy, and more than once he asked for her name, but she wasn't taking the bait.

She wasn't stupid. There was something inside her yearning to break free, some kind of repressed memory her mind wasn't unlocking for whatever reason. Over the years as a police office, she'd dealt with several case of amnesiacs, and the look of horror on their faces as they gradually remembered made her wonder whether she even wanted to remember anything. There was a kind of bliss in ignorance, and she intended to take that with both hands.

It was about thirty minutes into the silence when Richard spoke up again, a low chuckle in his throat.

"Do you know the moment I started to believe it all? The moment I began to realize that life was real? I got checked into hospital for alcohol poisoning…"

"… a lesson clearly not learned," Ana interrupted coldly.

"And do you know what the doctor's name was?" Richard pressed his face against the bars. "Jack Shepherd."

He laughed again, shaking his head.

"Jack Shepherd," he repeated, as if she hadn't heard the name. "I remembered him too. He didn't believe me either."

Ana had stopped listening. Her jaw had slackened at the name, her memory searching for a face to go with the name.

"_No ring because you're single or because you don't like wearing one?"_

Her heart dropped; her pulse somehow quickened; the colour rushed out of her face. Every muscle, every fibre of her body had frozen. A thousand memories were pushing forwards, and yet she still hesitated to let them through.

"You know him?" Richard asked, studying her face.

"No." She kept her composure. "Name doesn't ring a bell."

"Oh."

He left it at that - and after a few moments, he curled up on the bed and drifted to sleep. The silence was welcoming.

Yet, inside, Ana's heart was racing. It was pumping blood around her so fast, she was sure she was close to having some sort of heart attack. Because certain things were making a sort of sense to her now. The name Jack Shepherd had driven her to the edge. As hard as she tried to keep it at bay, the image of her and a dark haired man sitting on the beach sharing tequila just _wouldn't go away._

She almost felt sick with herself.

And suddenly that nightmare began to make a frightening amount of sense to her. Her palms started to sweat, and she felt this sudden terror grip her body, though she didn't understand where it came from. She'd never been afraid before.

But the gunshot echoed across her mind, seemed to repeat itself over and over in slow motion, like in those police dramas on television ( a poor imitation, if you asked her). And the reason for her fear suddenly became clear, almost bringing her a sickening sense of relief along with it.

It wasn't that she didn't want to remember that other life.

She just didn't want to know what she'd done for someone to end it.


End file.
